New journey planners make bus travel easy for visitors

Tuesday 02/05/2017

A collection of new journey planners are now available to make bus travel easier for visitors to the north Northumberland Coast. The planners have been designed to give visitors all of the information they need to easily explore the area without having to use their car.

Each journey planner tells visitors how to get to all of the major attractions and destinations in the area - including which buses to catch from where they are staying, how long the journeys take and information about any connections. The A4 sheets also include some suggested itineraries and information about discounts and tickets.

The planners were launched last Wednesday, when tourism businesses were shown first-hand how good the bus services are, as they took a trip on an Arriva X18. Launching the new planners, Jeff Sutheran, B&B owner from Seahouses and Chairman of the North Northumberland Tourism Association said:

“Providing easy to understand travel information to visitors is the most important thing we can do to encourage them to leave their cars behind for a few days during their stay in Northumberland. The owners of accommodation businesses are best placed to provide this information and these journey planners will make that job easier for them.

“The holiday cottage industry told us that A4 information sheets are the best way to present this information and we have done that.”

Chris Curtis, commercial manager at Arriva North East said:

“As a company we invest heavily in providing good quality timetables in many formats as well as our increasingly popular ‘Arriva App’ to make journey planning easier for bus passengers. These new journey planners are aimed specifically at visitors and accommodation providers and will complement our timetables to encourage more ‘car-free days’ to be taken.

“The launch of the new planners coincides with the start of the summer timetable on 30th April which providing a more frequent service along the Northumberland coast.”

The new planners were funded by the Northumberland Coast Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) Sustainable Development Fund and the North Northumberland Tourism Association. Eight individual planners have been produced for Berwick, Belford, Bamburgh, Seahouses, Beadnell, Embleton, Alnmouth and Warkworth.

The journey planners are available to download in a pdf format from the AONB website http://www.northumberlandcoastaonb.org/getting-around/ . Tourism businesses are encouraged to print out the best planner according to their location and make them available to their customers. Help with adapting the planners for other places is available from the AONB Partnership.